


the day of his cleansing

by Bushwah



Series: we the clay [8]
Category: Fake AH Crew (Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter)
Genre: Ableism, Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Cults, Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Amoric Horror, Betrayal, Chronic Pain, Computer Programming, Consent Issues, Crying, D/s, Dehumanization, Dehydration, Detox, Dissociation, Disturbing Fluff, Doctor/Patient, Domestic Violence, Drug Use, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Female Jack Pattillo, Flashbacks, Gaslighting, Identity Issues, Immortal Fake AH Crew, M/M, Massage, Multi, Neglect, Overdosing, Panic Attacks, Power Imbalance, Psychological Horror, Self-Harm, Sensory Deprivation, Solitary Confinement, Spiritual Abuse, Starvation, Stockholm Syndrome, Temporary Character Death, Torture, Toxic Masculinity, Trans Female Jack Pattillo, Trans Jack Pattillo, Trans Male Michael Jones, Trans Michael Jones, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator, Victim Blaming, Withdrawal, having sex instead of talking, left alone in bondage, psychiatric commitment, wrenseroticlibrary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:15:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23189095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bushwah/pseuds/Bushwah
Summary: Jack makes a little mistake with Michael.
Relationships: Gavin Free/Michael Jones, Jack Pattillo/Geoff Ramsey, Michael Jones/Jack Pattillo
Series: we the clay [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643119
Kudos: 17





	the day of his cleansing

**Author's Note:**

> This is an FPF fic based exclusively on the Fake AH Crew lore as set forth by Rooster Teeth Productions. This work owes an additional debt of thanks to Wren wrenseroticlibrary.tumblr.com and their collab partner Threatie alastair-made-me-undo-it.tumblr.com, posting collaboratively as Wrespawn on the AO3, for their contributions to the FAHC fandom.
> 
> All major characters in this series are abusive, in that they use abuse tactics in conducting their relationships. However, the degree of trauma they inflict depends on a variety of factors, within and outside their control. Abusive acts committed from a position of extreme power, such as Jack's control over the respawn machine (regarding the crew) or the other Fakes' access to it (regarding outsiders), are both particularly damaging and particularly unjustifiable.
> 
> The drug referenced in the tags is not a substance; it's a different method of entering an altered state.

Michael drifts from joy to joy.

He's long since lost track of time. He's not concerned about anything. He doesn't want anything. He has none of the usual signifiers of existence. But he continues, impossibly, wonderfully.

Every now and again the floating feeling abates. He starts to return to his body—aching with his usual pain, along with hunger and the myriad strains of holding still—and he flinches, and reaches out to Jack, pleading wordlessly for her to take it away.

She does. It only takes a few words, perhaps a brief touch; certainly no significant part of her attention. She does, the first time he asks, and the second, and...

Neither of them keep count. Jack is busy, and Michael isn't in any state to be forming memories.

This goes on until Jack finishes her work.

* * *

She closes her laptop and sets it to her right with a sense of deep satisfaction. On her left is Michael, who she's been idly petting with her off hand when she isn't typing. She looks at him and actually sees him for the first time in hours.

He's completely limp, drooling slightly onto the couch. His eyes are open, but he hasn't reacted to her movements at all.

_Well, shit._

She pulls him into her lap. He's a dead weight, but she's strong. She puts her hand on his forehead as if checking his temperature—she knows it's nothing so mundane as a fever, but it's not like it's inaccurate to imply he's sick.

“Rise and shine, honey.”

“Uh?”

He can tell that she's talking to him, but he doesn't seem to be parsing her touch normally, and she's pretty sure he didn't hear the words.

“It's time for you to wake up.” She imbues the words with a little of the force of a command.

“Good dream,” Mikey says.

She runs her hands methodically over his body, firmer than usual, and gives a gentle squeeze to each joint. By the time she's done, Mikey's eyes have focused, and he's doing his own inventory of his body, tensing and releasing various muscles without moving.

“That's right.” Jack keeps her voice firm and businesslike—she certainly doesn't want to give him any more of a reward than he's already had. “I'll help you up. Come with me.”

She takes his hand and pulls him up off the couch, and he follows her, a silent shadow, upstairs to the torture facility.

Geoff had insisted on its installation. Jack isn't sure why. Ryan's the only one who semi-regularly uses it. Geoff probably thinks that “enhanced interrogation” is effective.

Geoff has always been an optimist.

In any case, she's not here for the implements. Pain is so inelegant as a method of control, and fear of pain isn't much better. (She spares herself a glance at Michael, who's looking at her adoringly.) What she wants is one of the holding cells.

She'd been the one to remind Geoff that the infliction of prolonged torture requires a safe place to store the prisoner. She had also been the one to tell the design consultant to take certain precautions against prisoner loss. The end result had been a room that was large enough to stand up or lie down in every dimension, with slick spongy padding on all reachable surfaces, and lights and a camera out of reach on the ceiling.

Geoff had scoffed and insisted on the addition of a small, cold, metal-barred cell with a hard little bed and a chamberpot. As far as Jack is aware, it's never been used. Geoff's larping as a king with a dungeon for suspected traitors doesn't extend to actually accusing his subjects of treachery. That would be work, and hasn't he earned his retirement?

The other holding cell has been much more useful.

Michael has never seen it before, Jack is sure, but he still has a fear reaction as soon as he crosses the threshold. He stops in place and crouches down into something resembling a fighting stance, his breath coming fast and frantic. She notes with amusement that he doesn't let go of her hand.

“Mikey?”

“Sorry,” he says automatically, then, “I'm fine.” He isn't, but that's all right. He can have his little lies. She has all the information she needs.

“Do you not want to come in here with me?”

He flinches. A moment later, perhaps realizing that he's shown weakness she didn't ask him to show, he straightens and steps up to her side. The two of them walk hand in hand all the way to the opposite wall.

“Lie down,” she orders. Mikey, of course, obeys.

* * *

He doesn't realize Jack is leaving until it's too late.

He whimpers when she releases him from her touch, but her voice is almost as good, and having orders just feels right, a pleasant simplicity of purpose. He lies there, right where she put him, and he's content to wait.

He feels her steps shifting the give of the softness under him, rolling him a little toward her. He hums happily. This is good.

She steps off the padded floor, out of the room. He has a little ungrateful thought— _no, come back_ —but she hasn't asked, so he doesn't voice it. Instead, he curls up comfortably as she closes the door.

He'll be good for her, do exactly what she told him to do, and eventually she'll come back.

He falls into his body by degrees. He has a headache. His stomach hurts. His shoulder hurts. His back hurts. Tears trace their juddering paths down his cheeks. Behind all this is the drumbeat repetition: Jack isn't there. Jack isn't there. Jack isn't there.

He can feel himself approaching a realization, and he flinches away from it reflexively. He's falling faster now. He doesn't want to know what's waiting for him at the bottom.

But gravity doesn't care what a raindrop wants.

* * *

He shifts restlessly on the soft floor of the cell. In his heart, doubts are growing.

Did she forget to come back? No, she can't have forgotten. Jack doesn't make mistakes. This... she did this. She decided to leave him here. He... he doesn't want her to have done that.

He hates that he even thought that. If she was here he wouldn't have. She's not letting him be good for her. That's not right, she should. He needs her, and she just... left.

He gets up and walks to the door. Or... where the door was. When he runs his hand over the padding there, he can just barely feel a seam between the panels. There's no handle. No way out.

He paces back and forth in his cell. Jack did something wrong, he thinks. She put him in here and left him. He tries to come up with some way to make this okay, but he can't, not without her. He needs her, and she left him, and he's not okay with that. He's not okay.

* * *

The first thing Michael notices, after the pain, is how fucking exhausted he is.

The pain he can pretty much ignore. It's like an “update now” notification—if he tries to deal with it, it'll consume hours of his time and energy, but if he ignores it just right, it fades into the background.

The exhaustion... is harder. He can sorta dimly remember that he was pacing earlier. That was good. He wants to do that. But when he goes to get up, the room spins, and then... he's on the ground again.

Fuck his head hurts.

But no, he's not dealing with that. He looks around the room. Green walls, a yellow floor. The ceiling is pretty tall, he thinks, but he can't actually see that far. Where the fuck are his glasses?

...nope, no recent memories he's going to touch with a ten-foot pole. Wow. Okay, glasses will stay a mystery. He knows why he's here now, though. Apparently he completely lost his shit and Jack—and one of his crewmates made the decision to lock him in here for his fucking safety.

He digs his nails under his collarbone. Ah, yeah, that's some nice pain. He feels steadier. He squints up at the ceiling. There's gotta be a camera there, right?

He picks a spot and waves at it, trying not to show his dizziness. “Gavin? Hey, Gavin, lemme out.”

* * *

The next morning, Jack wakes up slowly.

She's got no reason to hurry. She thinks about breakfast (not yet, she doesn't want to get up) and waking up Geoff (nah, he was up later than she was) before she remembers, oh yeah, she was going to check on Michael.

She reaches for her phone. Sure enough, there's several low-level security alerts. She turns the volume down low and plays the footage.

22:14. Movement detected.

02:25. _Gavin? Hey, Gavin, let me out._

02:42. _Gavin, hurry up, it's boring in here._

05:01. _I'm cold._

05:03. _Look, whatever I did, I'm sorry, yeah?_

05:10. _Gavin, this isn't funny._

05:11. _Anyone? Can you hear me?_

05:11. Volume warning.

The clock reads 08:48.

Jack elects to leave the rest of the recordings. She does bring up a live view of Michael, video only. He's slumped in a corner of the room, staring blearily ahead. His mouth is open slightly. He seems to have hit a stable point.

She closes the app. Might as well have breakfast first.

* * *

Michael is trying to remember the name of the third Kardashian girl—Kayla? Karlie?—when there's a movement across the room.

His head whips around, and his vision goes dark for a moment. The blotches fade away to reveal Jack wearing a white T-shirt and light blue sweatpants. She looks worried.

“Michael, honey?”

Fuck, her kindness grates on him. He doesn't like Jack. She's too nice, too normal. He feels off balance around her, like he never knows what she wants.

But right now none of that matters. Right now he just has to convince her to let him out.

“Yeah?” he says, a little late. “I'm doing a lot better.” He yawns involuntarily. Why not, it's an angle. “Can I go to bed? I promise I won't...” He doesn't know what he did, is the problem. “...freak the fuck out like that again, fuck. I'm fine. I just wanna lie down.”

“You're not going to hurt yourself if I leave you alone?”

He didn't hurt himself in here hardly at all. But he doesn't say that—doesn't want her to know he could have, doesn't want her to know he _knows_ he could have.

“Of course I won't, Jack,” he says instead. “Honestly, I don't know what happened, but it's over. I swear.”

That was more information than he intended to give her, but she doesn't seem put off by his admission of weakness.

“If you're sure,” is all she says. “Do you want to go to bed normally, or take the shortcut?”

Michael is newly aware of the throbbing pain in his head, worse now that he knows it could soon be over. “Shortcut. Please.”

* * *

He awakens with the opening of the pod.

He waits there for a minute, then two. Then he realizes that he's waiting for Jack and gets up, shaking his head. He doesn't notice until he's doing it that the dizziness is totally gone.

Sure, he expected her to be there, but it's not like she told him to wait. He slinks across the room, trying to stay turned away from the door. Old reflexes; it's not like anyone here is gonna be surprised by his dick.

He puts on underwear first, then opens one of the smaller drawers and takes out a pair of glasses. Finally, he can fucking see. He blinks, squints, lets his vision adjust. Better.

He dresses the rest of the way, half expecting Jack to arrive while he's doing it. She doesn't. He opens the respawn room door and goes back to his room.

Gavin's there.

“Oh, hello, boy!” Gavin says, as if he's not literally sitting on Michael's bed poking at Michael's phone. Michael goes up to him and physically takes it out of his hand.

Gavin pouts. “Aww, I hadn't cracked it yet.”

Michael flops down behind Gavin and sets his phone on the table on the other side of the bed. “Surprising, considering...”

Gavin has twisted around to look at him. “Considering what, boy?”

...he has no idea how long it was. He doesn't know when it started. He doesn't know what time it is now. He doesn't even know what he did to start it.

Besides, nothing happened.

“Never mind.” Michael gestures at himself. “Want some?”

“Thought you'd never ask.”

**Author's Note:**

> Leviticus 14:2.


End file.
